Canadian Humanitarian NGO & Canadian Lobster Fisherman involved In Water & Drip Irrigation Community Development in Mali, West Africa. Living Stories. Listening To Stories. Looking for Moments & Memories. Writes very poorly, and is oh so struggling to balance two very different lives.

At first I heard the woman was taken from Koutiala, the next town north of us. 140km is close enough for that kind of horrifying activity. A news site then said Gloria Cecilia was taken from a village South of Koutiala. This was getting even closer to home. Lastly, on twitter the village name was said to be Karangasso, and my heart kind of stopped, as I was in Karangasso a few days ago. My friend just spent four days in the second Karangasso we know.

So i was panicking to figure out which one it might be. And Shocked that this could be unfolding in villages I am associated with.

To my great relief I learned there are at least four villages named Karangasso, and it was not any village I visit or drive through at all. My heart settled.

Why?

It is still the Karangasso of someone, and they are now having to deal with the tragic reality that radical fundamentalists are active in their region, with local support. (As of this writing two arrests have been made of implicated locals). However, it makes little difference. Gloria Cecilia Narvaez Argoti, from Columbia is taken without a trace.

I’m sure the international community in Koutiala is rethinking their security measures, as are we.

It’s a sad day around here. A sad day for the locals, fo all Malians, as so very few Muslims support this kind of activity.

This makes three women taken by radicals in Mali within the last year. The list of captives held in the expansive Sahara of Mali is getting longer.

J. R.R. TOLKIEN – PEACE IS NEVER FREE

"………….. and there in that pleasant corner of the world they plied their well-ordered business of living, and they heeded less and less the world outside where dark things moved, until they came to think that peace and plenty were the rule in Middle-earth and the right of all sensible folk. They forgot or ignored what little they had ever known of the Guardians, and of the labours of those that made possible the long peace of the Shire. They were, in fact, sheltered, but they had ceased to remember it."
J. R.R. Tolkien "The Fellowship of the Ring" , 1985, George & Allen & Urwin Pub LTD(Page 22-23 prologue)

Top Rated

Pictures

Photo is attributed as, “The Graves Of A Catholic Woman And Her Protestant Husband Seperated By A Wall, Holland, 1888.”

Bones placed in Animistic Religious Ritual

Jean Claude spreading already fermented coco out to dry.

My son Ted with me on a return trip to Ivory Coast in 2009. His first time back in Ivory coast since his childhood. Coffee drying.

Some of my coco growing friends. A happy reunion in 2009. Man I miss these guys.

90 km In the Bush.Doing Drought Season Drip Irrigated Gardens.

View From the Pier in Segou.

Farming tools have not changed for these people for 300 years.

Our orange lady, who passed away.

By the Baffond on Niaradougou. By the Potato fields.

Road to Bankagooma Land

Storage Granery for Millet to feed the family though 9 months of drought in Sahel.